by A. R. Hadley
Touch yourself for me, Jess. I want to watch you make yourself come. Unbutton the top three buttons of your blouse before you drive home from work.
"Jess." He grit his teeth. Desolation was in his tone. He cradled my face. Both cheeks. He held me in place.
"Put your hands behind your back," he repeated the words. This time, it was definitely a command.
He looked down at me like I was his kingdom or his city. He was the king. I didn't like what I saw. His eyes were blazing with dominion. Me. I was his prize. His possession. His land. He wanted control of my mouth. I knew how it would go. I had seen it in porn. No man would take control of me like that. Not even Jonathan. If he loved me, he wouldn't even ask this of me. Why wasn't it enough that I was on my knees before him sucking him off? Nothing was enough for him. He was insatiable. I was growing tired of his little suggestions.
"We don't have time." I resumed licking him. Up and down. I swirled my tongue around his tip. I spoke against his sensitive skin. "We have to leave, and I don't want to do it like that."
I swallowed my last word with his dick as I took him again. Faster. It was getting difficult to breathe. His hands were at his sides. For now. Loose. Ready to take the gun from the holster and draw. I pumped him, willing him with the strength of my tongue and my lips and my hands to give up and let go. He met my insistent motion with his own thrusts. Maniacal thrusts, over and over, right up until he released. He had, in fact, grabbed onto my hair and my face, those last few seconds, before he spilled down my throat. He had held me in place. Tight. Constricted. His subject. I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't breathe...
When it was over, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and stood. I was already thinking of the perfect tie to match his suit, to replace the unacceptable one.
nine
JONATHAN
I tossed and turned and wrestled with myself underneath the ordinary cotton sheets. What time was it? I refused to look at the clock. We had an entire week booked.
Here.
In the small, off-the-beaten-path town. An entire week of shitty-shitty sleeping. What had I been thinking? A week of trying to do without work. Jessica forbade me to open the laptop. No one denied me anything. No one questioned me. So I worked anyway. Secretly. I could talk overseas when I couldn't sleep, and well, I couldn't sleep.
I heard my father's voice the loudest in the dark of night. Louder than the ocean and the waves. Louder than the rise and fall of Jessica's breath and the terror of her dreams. My father would surely give me hell if he knew we were having trouble conceiving. I had trouble. It would be my trouble. My fault alone. How could I be a real man if I couldn't spread my seed? A basic rite of passage. Normal. Except, he wouldn't know. I didn't tell Declan things. We didn't speak. I had managed to avoid him for years, but it didn't stop me from hearing his voice on rotation. The strange bed, the strange place, his voice reminding me of my mistakes, all of it was making me especially vulnerable to my typical early morning nagging and the pitfalls of my conscience. I was falling all over myself here, tripping on the garbage I invented as reality.
I turned onto my side. The numbers I had been avoiding shot out at me like a laser beam. 4:12 a.m. Well, I had managed three hours. Somehow, my body could function on only a few hours of shuteye a night. It was a strange phenomenon. I never needed sleep the way other people seemed to crave it. I required a few hours. Minimum. Four or five. I wasn't a god. I needed something. I didn't know what was ideal or recommended by doctors. I didn't give a shit either. I knew my body. Something was off, though. I hadn't been getting the dose I required. Maybe it was the vacation. The relaxation. Too much of anything made a person want more. More sleep than you needed made a person extra tired, lethargic. I didn't do lazy. So I made the most of my insomnia. I pounded out messages in the middle of the night to Europe and Asia. I looked into Orlando just as I had intended. I caught up on dozens of emails. Personal and business. My sister, Sheila, was having a birthday party next week for one of the kids. My mother had been complaining about my absence, even though as of late she rarely saw me. Six of my seven sisters were discussing the merits of my father attending the celebration.
He wouldn't dare.
Work was fine, but I still needed to get back to Los Angeles. I needed to keep my finger on the pulse. I needed routine. Riding bikes each morning, eating the same variation of breakfast, checking out local art galleries and mom-and-pop restaurants, fucking, I mean, making love to Jessica in the afternoons on the bed in the same position — none of those activities were my idea of routine. Not the routine I wanted. Or craved. When did my life become so predictable? So boring? So vanilla? I laughed. There were terms. I was learning them. I had been doing my BDSM research on the Internet. At night mostly, when I couldn't sleep.
Vanilla...
Conventional sex. Plain sex. No kink. No fetish. Unadventurous. The opposite of exciting. The term was subjective. Sure. Mostly though it spelled out in very brash, flashy letters:
No variety. No risk. No hurt. No complications.
Vanilla sex equaled an emotionally safe escape route.
Jessica's name may as well have been filed underneath the definition or explanations. Even her skin matched the flavor. I had to start pushing her, telling her what I needed. Soon. Did I need it, or only want it? Would she deny me? Maybe I was being too harsh on her. She always hid her desires. Her emotions. Better than me. Maybe I just needed to fuck the vanilla out of her and pound the kink in.
ten
JONATHAN
She stepped into the room after having had a massage. She had one each afternoon. Fucking routine. Vacation necessity. I asked her to join me at the window. People watching had become my routine.
"What are you humming?" she asked as she approached. "That's not like you?"
Was I humming? Jesus. What was like me anymore? I was growing, shedding the skin of victim and replacing it with permanence. A man I wanted to face in the mirror. Every day.
The sky looked amazing after rain. It wasn't a sight I was accustomed to seeing. I had stood at the window for a long time that afternoon. The rain had mesmerized me. Most of the people below didn't even vacate the beach during the storm. They huddled under brightly colored umbrellas. A few remained in the water, frolicking. Living. Apparently, I was humming. The rain tapping against the window probably gave me the beat. What was it? "Stormy Weather." My mother used to play the record. Fitzgerald not Sinatra.
"How do you feel?" I slipped up. I had learned to stop asking her that question the week after the hospital. I would have to distract her from the ludicrous feeling of something that had no explanation. I stepped behind her. I touched her waist with both hands. I nuzzled my nose into her hair.
"I'm sleepy," she replied.
Thank God.
Right. The nap. That usually came after the massage and before the sex. Maybe we could mix it up. I circled her wrists, applying a light but firm pressure. My dick stirred, actually stirred, just thinking about telling her what to do. Ordering her the way I would a subordinate. Except I loved her, and she was far superior to me. This Dom/sub thing held a million possibilities. I guided her manicured hands up toward the window. The beach below was littered with people, chairs, boards, and toys. No one could see us. We were on a high floor behind tinted glass. I placed each of her palms on the warmth of the pane as I began to ease her long skirt up her legs. She took a hand away. I kissed her neck, distracting her as I put it back on the glass.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
I didn't answer. I hitched her skirt above her waist and slipped her panties down a few inches, exposing her ass to me. Her curves fit my palm like a puzzle piece. I had been daydreaming for weeks about striking it, imagining the heat that would come off of it. Jesus. The creamiest, softest ass I'd ever seen could be pink. Red. Bruised. I grabbed her hips, positioning her, and I sunk my nails into her skin. She rose up on her toes and yelped quietly. I dug in a little more. She tensed. I
could feel it. She took both hands down.
Goddamnit.
"Put your hands on the glass, Jess." I tried out the voice. I was familiar with it. Extremely familiar. Just not sexually. I didn't get to be head of my father's dying company without a dominating voice or the balls to take risks and make choices. Problem was, speaking to Jessica in that tone, in that way, it didn't seem to be working. Was I mistaken about this whole thing? Was I doing it wrong?
"Jon, I'm not letting you, you know, against the glass."
Christ. She couldn't even say the words. I wanted to push her now. I wanted to break her. It was fate. Tempting me. Dangling a carrot. Pushing her past her comfort zone would be incredible. She would get to the other side of pretentiousness and join me. She would want what I want. It wasn't humiliating. Why had her tone indicated humiliation? I just wanted to look at her beautiful body against the glass, splayed out, obeying me with her posture, all for me. She was all for me, right?
I. Owned. Her.
I took her wrists. I spread her arms farther apart than before as I slapped her palms against the glass. I kept ahold of her wrists as I pressed my groin against her ass.
"Do this for me," I growled low in her ear. "Listen to me. I'm going to let go of your wrists, and you will leave them there. On the window."
I undid my pants and pushed them down. "I want to take you from behind. Like this." I held my cock and guided it into the crack of her ass. I slid it toward her pussy. "Your body is beautiful, Jess," I whispered. "Watch the ocean." I rocked the two of us into a rhythm. "Relax. You are safe with me. Let me guide you into something—"
"Something what?" she snapped. She tilted her head to the side, glancing over her shoulder at me. She never cried. Only once had I ever seen her cry. God, she rarely tossed me a crumb of emotion, but I could see the tears locked away behind her icy stare. None of this turned her on. Did this kind of thing, kink, we hadn't even reached kink yet, turn women on? I sure as fuck was turned on, or I was until she shot me that look. The one implying I was crazy or dirty or sick. I brought her wrists together and held them with one hand while I slipped my other hand inside her panties. She wasn't hiding anything as I had hoped. I had hoped her body had betrayed her words. But she wasn't wet. Was I a sadist? Did I want to push her farther? Did I want to see her cry? No. I let go. Her skirt dropped. I pulled up my pants.
"Jesus, Jon. What the hell has gotten into you?"
"Do you want to have this discussion?" I could feel veins flexing under my skin, but on the outside, I knew what to do.
"There is something to discuss?" She crossed the room, her arms folded over her chest. "Aren't you happy?"
"I am." I think. I think too much. I needed to fuck. It was simple really. She made it complicated. "I want to try new things."
She stared at me, mouth ajar. "Sexual things?"
"Yes." I went toward the bed, shoulders squared, rubbing two fingers across my lips. I sat. Why didn't this place at least have a decent scotch in the room?
"I want you to..." No. Don't say obey. "I want to give you suggestions. Commands. I want you to—"
She started laughing before I could finish. I stood. I pulled her to the window. I may have dragged her. She didn't complain. Not yet.
"Look at those people." I kept my hand on her waist. "They don't give a fuck what we do. They can't see us. This is about us." I snarled the words into her ear. Once I started to unleash it, I didn't know who I was becoming. With her anyway. She was always different. Grace Kelly in the movies, not the one in real life.
"This isn't us." She spoke flatly. Her voice mirrored the sea, beyond the waves, where the water eventually kissed the horizon. An eerie calm.
"It can be." I turned inside out, but I spoke tenderly. "I want it to be about us."
I played with her hair the way she liked it. She leaned into my touch. I began to bunch the strands and tug. Not too rough. I didn't want to scare her away again. I kissed her neck until she whimpered. I licked her skin. I began to pull her hair a little tighter until her nose pointed toward the ceiling. I nibbled her neck.
"So sexy, Jess."
I breathed against her skin. I held her head in place. My place. She was mine. I bit her neck. A nip. I sucked it, and then I kissed it. She smelled of fresh grass mixed with whatever oil they used on her at the spa. Almond. I repeated the process, biting harder the next time and the next until I could see marks. Little ones. Surface.
"Jon," she moaned but with a hint of protest in her tone. I could not deny her hesitation. I had become an expert at reading the implacable Jessica Carnes.
"You're hurting my hair. I don't like it."
I let go because I wasn't a tyrant, but inside I needed to locate the safety lever. The switch. I looked for it. I couldn't find it. I breathed until my pulse returned to normal.
"Please. Be softer. I'll try. Take me." She paused. "Take me from behind. That's okay. Just don't." She touched her neck where I had left the gorgeous marks. "Don't hurt me."
God. She was afraid. It would never work if she were afraid.
I cradled her cheeks. We were eye to eye. "I never want to hurt you."
She may never understand the difference. Was there a difference? What kind of husband wants to bite his wife's skin until it bruises? What kind of husband wants to fuck a woman hard enough to make her scream? To tie her and bind her at the elbows, the wrists, the knees, to gag her mouth with their cock? We had a long way to go. To learn. Both of us. Except...
I wanted to make her scream.
Right. The. Fuck. Now.
I closed my eyes. "I'm sorry." I picked her up. She wrapped her legs around me. She trusted me. To a point. The point was at the jagged edge of the cliff we stood on. The piece of the summit that stood out from the rest. It would cut someone open, or the climber would just fall off.
One. Little. Misstep.
I took her to the bed, set her down gently, ready to make love to her the way we always did. No threat to our marriage.
Sweet. Vanilla.
I became what she needed. I could stay the same for her. I wouldn't change. We would keep trying to have children even though we knew it was not a foregone conclusion or something we even discussed. She shut me out in every conceivable way, and I called it happy. No feelings. Happy. We would chalk this up to me, my problem, and it would go into one of Jessica's neat little piles labeled: "bullshit."
eleven
JONATHAN
I collected shells on the beach. Soft and smooth on the outside. Some cracked. Some jagged on the edges. Something, creatures used to live inside them. I had found piles of them in the gray sand. Jessica looked amazing, spread out on her stomach in a white bikini, her legs in the air, bent at the knee, a book in her hands. Eat, Pray, Love.
Jessica probably thought she was that person. The author. The introspective woman who would take a hard appraisal of her life and go on some spectacular spiritual journey. No. I had not read it, but I knew the bullshit synopsis. My wife didn't have an ounce of spiritual curiosity. She wouldn't even let me have my nonsensical fun.
I sat beside her, near her waist with my legs crossed, busying myself with the important job of placing some of my newfound shells along her body. Her spine, shoulder blades, the small of her back. I lined them up. Rows. Soldiers. Havens. They must have felt exquisite on her skin. Her hair looked beautiful blowing in the wind. Her ass amazing. I tucked my fingers into the side waistband of her bikini as I began to place the shells over the wonderful curves of her bottom. I was making a village or something. Patterns. I don't know. Maybe I was going crazy. Too much vacation and wandering, or was it wondering? She shifted. A few shells fell off. I slapped her butt. Playfully. I didn't think anything of it. She let the book flop toward the white sand, white and dry, gray only where it was wet, as she glanced over at me.
"Take those things off me." She wiggled. The shells rattled. "And don't smack me like that." She lifted the book up and focused. She pretended to read. She had ruine
d my hard earned fun.
"I didn't smack you." I wanted to smack her ass. Hard. "I tapped you."
She would know the difference. This ridiculous little conversation confirmed she wouldn't like it if I spanked her. I was still convinced I was wrong. A little part of me held onto the notion that maybe she was a closet masochist. After all, Jessica was a hard read. No tells. Even her words could be lies to hide what she really wanted. She was too prim and proper for a public ass "smacking." What about a private one?
"What's happening in your book?" I rearranged the shells that had fallen. "Are you up to the praying part yet?" I didn't give a damn. She knew it.
"Do you ever pray?" she asked. I couldn't see her face, but she had made the mistake of letting a grin slip. I could see the very edge of her lips. They curved. Now she was getting nasty. Her sweet little taunting voice, digging into me.
"I'm a good Catholic boy." I may have batted my copper lashes at her with that comment. She wouldn't know. She kept her attention facing forward. She spoke over the sound of the waves and the children playing in the water and building sand castles.
"Catholics don't pray. They recite."
"Tell that to my mother. I'm sure she spent many nights with a rosary in hand, praying for her wayward children." Probably with pills in hand too. And booze. God. We are one fucked up family. Maybe I should pray. What could it hurt?
Jess only made a noise. An mmm or a mhmm. I don't think she had prayed a day in her whole life. She didn't know what is was like to almost die, to have the world swept out from under you, to wake up and remember nothing. She didn't know the desperation. The drive to pray. She just didn't have it. I don't think she was even born with it.
"This isn't the Our Father, Jon. This is meditation. It's communion."
